Snakes Whispering

Chapter 1: Another one bites the dust

She should have died. She wanted to die. She accepted the fact that she was going to die. So why is she not dead? "Jaqulin!" A shrill scream sounded from the next room over and the girl jumped up from her pallet on the hard oak floors, pulling hay from her hair as she ran to the house where her sick family was. The doors were boarded up, keeping people out, but also keeping them in. Jaqulin didn't stop when she got close, she didn't even slow. She just crashed through one of the small windows and rolled through the broken glass. There was no time. If her mother was calling her, there was no time. Someone was dying. Someone needed to be saved, and the only people left were her father and brothers. Only five people out of the nineteen that had lived here hadn't died. Five survivors of the sickness. The Red Death, or Blood Plague infected almost everyone. The start was slow enough for quarantines to be established, but there wasn't enough space and only people living close to big cities with big money could get in. Poor families in the middle of nowhere towns were left to die. Now, only twenty-eight percent of the worlds population is left. And they're hunting down the infected and the immune. "Jack! Hurry!" Her mothers scream pushed her on and she rolled, pushing up with her hands on the glass covered wood and sprinting forwards, a shard of glass stuck in her right hand letting her blood fall on the floor. The sound of a snakes hiss filled her head. "My god," she whispered almost silently. "Please not now." The noise didn't quiet, if anything it got louder. She didn't stop. She couldn't. She had to help her mother. In one fluid motion she pulled the glass out of her hand and drew it across her wrist, spilling her blood onto the floor. She didn't slow even a step. There were five rooms in the house, each fairly small in size, but still decent. There were windows on the west side of the rooms, and only the west side. Every room was covered in junk and clothes, mattress scattered about leaving little to no room for people to walk. Jack didn't pause in her hurried state as she sprinted through another room, jumping over mattresses, toys and clothes. There were three rooms left between her and her remaining family. The fourteen corpses of her dead relatives were laid out in the living room- the few bones that were left of them that is. Fourteen people reduced to bone, less than 206 of them in total, less than one whole human skeleton. Fourteen people killed slowly from the inside out and them burned. It melted their flesh off and burned some bone to dust. Jaqulin jumped over the next mattress and landed badly on the floor, slipping over her younger brothers old shirts. She landed hard on the floors and scraped her knees on the hard wood flooring, drawing blood. She felt a tightness around her wrist, it moved up her arm and down her body to her knees. Smiling, she pushed herself up and started running again. "Do you think you can heal those while I run?" She asked aloud, seemingly to no one. No, a voice filled her head. I can heal thiss only when you sstop. The voice was serpentine, and silent to anyone but her. Jack nodded her head and continued to run, ignoring the pain from the fall. There was one room in between them. One boarded up room. She slowed only to kick down the door. It flew open, the broken board falling to the floor and half of the door breaking from its hinges. She hurried over to her mother and dropped to her knees, not really checking who it was that was dying. "Admit your wrongs!" Jaqulin's voice wasn't harsh, it was panicked. She was worried for her families safety. The one about to die was her father, Alabaster Fae. The Fae family used to be wealthy, until Alabaster met the young gypsy girl, Liza Broadwind, and the two fell in love. And Liza got pregnant at age sixteen. Alabaster's family disowned him. But the last name still holds its value and stature today, because they run a medical corporation. MediCo is one of the few remaining medical corporations left. With most everyone dead, they were left with a large need for medicine and a limited supply. People killed for the stuff. "Alabaster!" Liza sobbed. "Please, do what she said, it saved me, maybe..." Her voice trailed off, replaced by her sobs.
"No... I can't..." he protested, avoiding eye contact with his wife and daughter. Jack knew what he had done, but the illness doesn't work that way. It never had. To live you either needed to commit no wrongs in your entire life, or admit to the worst of them. That's how it goes. How it always has gone.
"Please, Al, please. Whatever it is, we can get through it... " Liza's voice trailed off for a moment before she took a deep breath and continued, her voice stronger and steady. "Whatever it is, it wont hurt me more than your death." Alabaster took one shallow breath before becoming limp and dying. Liza broke down and began sobbing again while Jack sighed and shook her head, some of her hair falling out of its braid in the process. She closed her eyes for a moment and muttered a silent prayer before moving her legs out from under her and looking at her knees. A red and black snake with opalescent eyes was coiled around her. The wounds on her legs were healed, leaving only a faint scar. She picked the creature up and it slithered back into the open- still bleeding- wound on her wrist and watching it close up. Jack stood up and hugged her mother before picking up her father with the princess carry, one arm behind his knees and another around his shoulders, his head lolling towards the ground. He was a big man of decent weight and anyone who hadn't survived the plague wouldn't be able to lift him as she was. The smell of burning flesh filled the room and Jack muttered a curse under her breath. The branding was beginning. Everyone was branded by a white mark after the beast ate your heart, even those who lived were branded. And brands were like fingerprints: each was different. And they were all in different places, some people got lucky and had less noticeable brands, others had them in obvious places. Jack was lucky. Her mark burned itself onto its right eye, which had already been damaged and blinded. The mark was somewhat small for her, about the size of a quarter, circular, an filled with strange rune like symbols. Her mother was one of the less fortunate. Her symbol was fairly large, looking like white vines growing up to her face. Jaqulin took a moment to pause and look at his brand. A snake growing out of a skull with a dagger jammed through the top of it. A sign that he did horrible things; and it was directly in the middle of his forehead. I can't believe he thought death was worse than telling what little family he had left about his affair. About his other family. Liza hadn't known, but Jaqulin had. She followed him one day, only to see him visiting his new family, arms laden with antibiotics. Antibiotics he didn't share with Liza and Jack. She ran home that day and cried in the room of her fallen brethren, grieving over the family her father had cost her. But her mother loved him. Therefore, she wished he would stay healthy, for her sake. With him gone, they only had one person left. Her younger brother Mac. He was a bit of a trouble maker, always doing things that got him into trouble. But when he did, he always told someone. Wether it be his friends or family, he always told. However, some secrets were always kept, no matter who was asking. Jack and Liza just had to hope Mac would forfeit his. With Alabaster dead, his wife took off towards the room near the one where Jack had been. Liza took off towards the next room, turning into a blur as she crossed the threshold. Her ability was-oddly enough-super speed. Before the sickness, she had never done anything at a fast pace, ever. It was part of the reason she was such an excellent Gypsy- she had a bad knee and couldn't get away fast enough, meaning she had to pickpocket that much better. Jack took off after her mother, running to the room where he lay. She leaped through the broken window and landed in a roll, stopping next to her family and sitting down. Mac had continued his confessions the moment Liza had entered, and he was almost finished reading off of the list he had written. Only five left. But time was running out, the marks on his skin kept inching closer to his heart. The snake was almost there. His panic began to set in as he started talking faster, his hands began shaking and he spoke with a slight stutter. The veins under his skin kept darkening, signaling just how close it was to snuffing out Mac's life. Liza, with tears still streaming down her dirty face, held a scalpel in shaky hands. She couldn't do this, and Jaqulin knew that. That's why she took the scalpel from her hands. She wasn't crying, she knew she couldn't, she had to be strong. For her mom. He too was crying as he spoke in rushed tones, there was one left. But it was too late for him. The dark shape had stopped over his heart. He was as good as dead with just enough time to utter his last words. " I got Calliope pregnant." The dark shape receded a little and Jack jumped into action, making a quick slice in the skin above his heart and reaching her hand in. She pulled out a bloody purple snake. It wriggled around in her hand, trying to bite her and gain enough freedom to slither back into her brother. Using two fingers she pinched behind the snakes head, putting the creature to sleep. She had discovered this trick while experimenting with her own. The strange part of this being it hadn't worked on regular snakes. Just the ones stemming from the Blood Plague. With the creature neutralized, she cut her own wrist, freeing the creature inside her. It slithered out and over to Mac, knowing what it was to do. Mostly. Heal? It questioned. "Heal." The repetition of the word was confirmation to the snake and it began the healing process. Mac's own red blood flowed faster from his wound, but instead of gushing out and onto the floor, it was shaped into threads. These threads sharpened and hardened at the tips, turning into a needle and thread of sorts. Mac had passed out from the pain, his breathing shallow. The creature got to work. It slithered over the top of the wound in intricate and complex patterns, the thread of blood followed, plunging into the soft flesh and stitching the skin back together. The process took thirty minutes. Just enough to time to get everything else in order. Jack's wrist was still bleeding, but she didn't care. Blood never bothered her, before or after. With her snake done with its work, it slithered over to Jack and the purple snake. Jack took the knife and made a small incision in her brothers wrist, just barely big enough for the snake to crawl through. It didn't have the power to heal like Jack's did, and his powers were yet to be discovered, but he now had them. And it was almost time for the branding. With no vulnerable family left, everyone had the option of sleeping in the house. But it was so tragic that not one of the three wished to remain anywhere near this place. But they would, if only long enough for Mac to be branded. Jack helped Mac stand and they headed out to the barn. Liza wanted to gather a few things before they would leave.